Iowa farmland values up over five percent

Iowa farmland values are up just over five percent from a year ago, but the increases seem to be leveling off. The Iowa Farm and Land Chapter Realtors Institute did the survey, and the group’s president, Troy Louwagie says the days of double digit increases are probably over and it’ll be more like two to five percent.

One reason was that the market was getting a little top-heavy as prices neared record highs. “We just cannot continue the three-, four-, five-hundred dollar increases that we’ve enjoyed the last few years here.” Louwagie says the consensus among real estate sellers is that the prices will continue to go up, but more slowly than in the past.

He says everybody felt the land prices were leveled off already with prices getting “a little top-heavy,” and even the two-point-nine percent increase in the prices over the last six months was a little higher than he’d expected. The ag-land realtor says it isn’t a guarantee that all farmland prices will show low increases from now on.

He says markets will be quite variable — in one county a farm could sell for a record high, and one down the road sell for quite a bit less because a neighbor wanted it. Low interest rates, good crops, and a tax rule that encouraged “tax-deferred property exchanges” are all credited with the strong rise in farmland prices. The survey shows farmland prices went up 46-percent over the past five years.